In this context you have to distinguish between three aspects: the daily editorial workflow, tools that are available for collaborative working and ContentScripting that is an extension of the system in order to allow workflows and tasks.
Daily editorial workflow
An editor's daily workflow consists of three important activities:
Explanation:
| to borrow/to edit | First an editor takes a document. This locks the documents so that no other editor has access to this particular document. |
| to save/to return | When the editor has finished editing, he can save the document in order to preview or to give it back again. In case the editor rejects his changes the document returns to its original status. |
| to release/to publish | After editing and return the editor can release the document. This means that the content is ready for publication. As soon as this document is published (or a referred document), the content is produced. |
This approach makes sure that content cannot be overwritten by mistake. Besides the content can be rendered in a preview at any time while editing and is only published at a well defined moment.
Additionally the editorial team gets support from the internal instant messenger. With this tool you can send messages to other users without an additional application.
Flexible workflow design with ContentScripting
The so called "Content-Script" technology is a very powerful and easy to program possibility to integrate workflows into the system. A Content-Script is a special JSP which carries out all activities of one user automatically.
By that easy query dialogues as well as complex wizards can be created without making interface programming necessary. These dialog forms are filled in with relevant data by the editor. The Content-Script itself sets up, fills and moves documents or creates folders.
Within one or more Content-Scripts even the most complex workflows can be assisted and each and every kind of work automated.
cmsWorks comes with programming examples of some Content-Scripts, starting with easy queries up to a complex assembly of several documents.